Teaching cows to build proper stone walls.

I received an email this week from a student of mine providing the link (posted below) to a well written piece about the dry stone wall he has been building, and the curious cows who come to watch what he's doing.    Thank you Ian.

stone-walling-til-the-cows-come-home/

It's Coming On Christmas

It's coming on Christmas

They're cutting down trees

We're feeling kinda smug

Cause we've got one of these. 

It's coming on Christmas

It's coming pretty soon

Our tree is looking splendid 

Cuz it snowed all afternoon.

It's coming on Christmas

It'll be over pretty fast

The trees will all be thrown out

But ours is gonna last.

Gift Wrapped

Festive ribbons of stone 'gift-wrap' the countryside

They tie the landscape into tidy bundles, looping the terrain in holiday cheer 

The walls create an ever present, ever distant present 

They decorate the grateful fields along their borders and well beyond 

Charming lines, flowing strands, set in place long ago by gifted hands 

A linear design upon the land

A medley of melodies laid out in stone

A mosaic created to explore the undulations of the earth

A sculptural contour-map

A tidy vista enveloping all in a lyrical tapestry

A hilly motif of borders, hedges, fencerows held in place by time and friction

I see an ordered pattern in these random tracts of stones

Shaped and dressed

Fitted and aligned and stacked

Endless gifts of a smiling-piling benefactor

In preparation for some future celebration of nature.

Only Ten More days Until Christmas

The Christmas rush is upon us. Whether it is finishing up that dry stone livestock containment wall for Santa's reindeer, or  making that outdoor stone fireplace in time so the clients can   hang their stockings up, or perhaps just a dry laid bench for Santa's helper to work on to make some last minute toys, we wallers often find ourselves with Santa really breathing down our necks this time of year.

In the pic above, my helper Akira Inman is seen hurrying to lay the last few firebricks in the firebox opening before Santa got too impatient and foolishly tried slipping down the dry stone chimney before it was ready.

Thankfully, in this case, it was July, and the work actually did get done by Christmas.

Connecting the Dots

Thought around the Edges

   Morning light reveals there's been a dusting of snow over the quarry.
   It has left all the frozen cakes of chocolate limestone with a crunchy coat of icing.
   Minus temperatures overnight have epoxied random chunks together.Affixing them to the cold hardpan earth below.
   The warmth from the sun has only just started to creep back in to their frozen consciousness - starting at the edges
   They don’t want to get out of bed.
   I try to loosen them with my foot.
   No movement.I finally manage to loosen a smaller one and use him to wake some of the larger ones.
   Thump thump.
   Only the silence is broken.
   I tell myself "They will be happy to go in our wall."
But for now they are angry at being woken so abruptly.

Don't let the idea of building without concrete frighten you.

A Moving Story

That rock Calgary drivers kept hitting has found a new home where it can be appreciated forever

'Sage Hill Rock' saved after outcry from community over its removal from a suburban parking lot

Robson Fletcher · CBC NewsDecember 8, 2017

A large stone in a suburban Calgary parking lot that that became famous as the 'Sage Hill Rock' after drivers kept hitting it has found a new home in the northwest community, near a little free library in a prominent park. (Left: Sage Hill Bottle Depot / Right: Brangwyn Jones) 

It's been a whirlwind week for the Sage Hill Rock.

First, it was struck repeatedly by drivers who tried — and failed — to manoeuvre their vehicles around the large stone that sat between yellow-painted curbs in the sprawling parking lot of a suburban retail centre in northwest Calgary.

• Drivers keep hitting large rock in suburban Calgary parking lot

Then, it became internet famous, with its image splashed across not just local news sites but international publications like Jalopnik, The Daily Mailand Fox News.

Then, it was unceremoniously removed and dumped behind the bottle depot it once guarded.

And finally, after an outcry from the community, it was relocated to a new home, where it can live out its days in peace, with the appreciation it deserves, safe from oblivious motorists.

The rock's "final resting place" is next to the little free library at Sage Valley Road and Sage Valley Boulevard N.W., said area resident Brangwyn Jones.

After an outcry from the community, the 'Sage Hill Rock' has found a new home. (CBC)

Jones ushered the Sage Hill Rock through its internet fame as the administrator of a community Facebook group where its story originated, and said people in the community "had a blast" with all the attention it received.

"They had a fun time," he said.

"I mean, how much love can you get from a rock?"

Rock became touchstone for new community

Jones said the Sage Hill Community Association got hold of RioCan, which owns the retail shopping complex where the rock once sat, and "negotiated the release of the rock" to its new home.

The whole affair has helped build a sense of community and identity in the relatively new neighbourhood at Calgary's northern periphery, he added.

Perhaps, he hopes, the Sage Hill Rock will even attract a few outside visitors.

"We're not exactly the tourist hub of Canada up in Sage Hill," he said.

"But if there's something that can attract people up here, who can come visit our businesses and look at our wonderful community, then why wouldn't we want to add that?"

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/calgary/sage-hill-rock-calgary-drivers-new-home-1.4440419

This is so wrong, on every level.

Standing Vertically

I find the 'vertical' looking wall very pleasing. The wallers in Ireland are known for this unique style of vertical stone stacking.  Women especially, if they work closely with one another, make really good looking walls too.

A Matter of Fact

I'd like to read a short excerpt from something I found on the rockshelf along the shore of Lake Ontario recently. Originally I was looking in the How-To section but then I moved over to an area that had an interesting selection of more, what shall I say, mystical offerings. 

I thumbed through some fossilized volumes written in what looked like small squiggly petroglyphs .  There were old tablets with raised inscriptions, carved, or maybe imprinted on the surface, all in some type of ancient brail. 

I sensed that great works containing many eternal truths were at my finger tips, if I could but decider the geological (geo-rational?) configurations they were composed in. 

Then, to my delight, I discovered a piece written in stone that began to speak to me. While the words were not audible, they were tangible and appealed in a very tactile way, not just to touch, but to every aspect of 'sense' . Here below is the best translation of that work. 

'The truth - that of life being contained in stone, and the life of stone being contained in truth, will always stand the test of time. In place of mere moments of unfocused altered states or lapses and occasional omissions in the consciousness of our being 'in the now', stone, especially as we purposely draw near to it, remains the physical evidence of that great cyclic transition of energy from changeless to 'potentially changeable' to the 'completely transitory' and back. 

All the ages and all the non ages are contained in rock. All duality of time and space, light and dark, life and death, purpose and senselessness is absorbed in it. We exist without existing, if we are not constantly held in place through the self determining influence of this cosmic geology. We sleep safely, hidden, relieved from all fear of selflessness, within the protective matrix of a stony universe. Be it molten or crystallized or vapour, we, along with all matter, and all that matters, are what 'rocks' us.'

Short TVO documentary on Walling Across Canada

Fourteen years ago we built a dry stone bridge (possibly the first in Canada) as well a 30 foot section of dry laid wall with students taking part in workshops held during the 2003 Dry Stone Festival that we ran Thanksgiving Weekend in Port Hope, Ontario. 

Though TVO could not get there until the weekend after to film the bridge construction, they ended up filming a second workshop and Norman Haddow standing in the rain explaining how the bridge was built. They did a good job of documenting the whole phenomena of people back then just starting to get excited about learning how to build 'walls without mortar'.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Vc-Wva2WHN2DYKCYmpl-KN2T1mlWP9r5 

Over the hump.

We’re presently wrapping up a satisfyingly large-scale walling project in a small town along the St Lawrence River. The wall is an impressive six feet high and will eventually have sedum and thyme growing along the top. It curves and undulates along the property line (opposite the coachhouse) and ends up joining up with a high privacy fence, towards the front of the main house. 

There is this massive underground continent of granite known by geologists as the Frontenac Arch in this area, and it extends down from Ontario into much of New York State. 

At one point on the property the wall goes over a large moss covered hump of this bedrock breaching out of the lawn. The place where the stones in the wall arch up and over the rounded bedrock has turned out to be one of the most interesting details I have had the pleasure of constructing. I always enjoy working with natural materials in natural settings - no machinery or power tools - but I felt even more privileged to be building this wall, not just on the earth, but right on top of the visible crust of the Canadian Shield. 





The planet has allowed me the rare opportunity to leave stone upon stone, permanently arching over this bisected arc-shaped outcropping, which originally formed below the surface somewhere in the ancient geological past.

The collaboration of waller and natural materials doesn’t get any better than this. 

You can't unsee it

You can stare at this image for a long time and not see it. When you do see 'it', you will wonder why you didn't see it before. Then you won't be able to unsee it.  

Funny how the brain works. 

Here's another pic you won't be able to unsee. This time it's of my hand. 

All the Rock

L'OBRA D'UN GEGANT from Antoni Mir Marí on Vimeo.

Melting

A well built dry stone wall, where all the stones are fitted well, often looks like the stones have all started to melt into each other. I sometimes wonder if that 'melted look' could somehow be intensified, would the wall look even better?
Maybe not.

The 15th type of non-regular pentagon

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3201424/A-new-way-tile-floor-Scientists-discover-strange-new-shape-trying-solve-one-maths-complex-problems.html

+2

Three scientists have made maths history by finding a new type of pentagon that can tile a floor without overlapping or leaving any gaps. It's what researchers call 'tiling the plane' and their discovery is only the 15th type of non-regular pentagon that can do this, with the last one found 30 years ago

SHAPES THAT CAN TILE A PLANE

While a triangle and a square can be tiled in limitless shapes and sizes, it is mathematically proven that convex polygons with more than six sides cannot.

Tiling with a non-traditional pentagon is a challenge that many have accepted over the past century, but a few people have been successful.

A German mathematician discovered five pentagons that tile in 1918 and a San Diego housewife also discovered five. The latest 15th tile discovery is the first in 30 years.

The discovery was made by researchers at Washington University using a computer program written by an undergraduate student.

The scientists included mathematics associate professor Casey Mann and his wife, Jennifer McLoud-Mann, along with undergraduate researcher David Von Derau.

The research could also have practical uses in many areas, including biochemistry and structural design.

'Many structures that we see in nature, from crystals to viruses, are comprised of building blocks that are forced by geometry and other dynamics to fit together to form the larger scale structure,' Mann told the Guardian.

'Aside from the practical uses of this new knowledge, which would include a whole different way to tile a floor,' he added.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3201424/A-new-way-tile-floor-Scientists-discover-strange-new-shape-trying-solve-one-maths-complex-problems.html#ixzz4zgqoTW5D
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Rocks, You and your Fingernails

Where there are rocks, watch out! Watch out, because the rocks are going to eventually come alive and they are going to have people crawling over them. It is only matter of time, just in the same way the acorn is eventually going to turn into the oak because it has the potentiality of that within it. Rocks are not dead. You see, it depends on what kind of attitude you want to take to the world…



You cannot get an intelligent organism such as a human being out of an unintelligent universe. So in any lump of rock floating about in space, there is implicit human intelligence. 

Don’t differentiate yourself and standoff against this and say ‘I am a living organism in a world made of a lot of dead junk, rocks and stuff.’ It all goes together, those rocks are just as much you as your finger nails.”


~ Alan Watts

Some Basketwall Rules

Rarely one on one, mostly one over two, or two over one.

No running joints with the wall 

Threw-stones score big with the referee 

Sometimes Blocking is allowed

Getting a lot of Fast Breaks doesn't always mean you're gonna win.

( Add your own rules in the comment section )

The Frontenac Arch Revisited

Observing a conversation between positive and negative space.